Purity of Form

We had heard rumors about the place for years, and obviously dismissed them. When a surveyor actually found it and brought back pictures, we assumed he was playing a prank on us. But someone upstairs took him seriously and sent a science team, and they brought back samples. Now there was a new laboratory somewhere in the mountains.

Our little outpost was the connection between that lab and the outside world, and we were all trying to get a peek at the hermetically sealed containers that were being shipped out. Security staff weren't privy to anything that was going on. But six months later, I was rotated into duty at the laboratory, to escort scientists as they run their tests.

As you crest the ridge and enter the valley, the first thing you notice is that it is filled with beige trees with white leaves. The trees have bark made of keratin, making them uncannily smooth. The leaves of the trees are pale white and tend to droop. They are made of skin, albino skin, the better to absorb light. In spring some grow "flowers" made of fine eyelashes.

Squirrels climb with small hands and chatter with almost-voices. Sheep walk on their knuckles and grow thick coats of coarse human hair. There are no birds, but bats are everywhere, hanging from trees with wings like emaciated hands. Even snakes have scales like tiny fingernails. Every animal has human eyes.

During summer the smell of human sweat is inescapable. Even in the laboratory it seems to cling to everything. Only in our hermetically sealed hazmat suits are we spared.

I'm showing Jones how to put on his suit, making adjustments every time he does it wrong, which is every time. My job is to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid in the valley, which is usually easy. New guys usually just follow along in grossed out daze.

When we're over the ridge and begin descending, picking our way past thorny, bone-like shrubs and into the treeline, he begins breaking the unwritten rule for security staff and starts pestering the scientists. Luckily, Dr. Vasquez is willing to indulge his curiosity.

"There aren't any normal plants and animals at all?" asks Jones.

"None. Even the microorganisms seems to be descended from inhabitants of the human gut. Normal plants can't sprout here, and normal animals die of allergic reactions." says Dr. Vasquez.

"Why?

"Its called allelopathy. These organisms all produce a protein that kills all non-human forms of life."

"That's why we have to wear these suits?"

"To protect us from allergens, yes. But also to protect the valley. We are genetically similar enough that diseases could spread from us to them."

We hear the sound of gagging and turned. Jones has taken off his facemask.

"It smells like sweat!"

"PUT YOUR MASK BACK ON!" I bellow, running.

Jones can't stop gagging, his throat is closing up. I wrestle his facemask on and open up the oxygen valve, but he is already slumping to the ground. Dr. Vasquez checks his vitals. Jones is unconscious, but not dead. He'll probably survive if we can get him back to the laboratory, but that means hauling him out of the woods, up the slopes, and back over the ridge, and we'll have to do it as fast as possible.

I hoist Jones on to my back, and, as I turn to Dr. Vasquez, I catch something out of the corner of my eye.

The first thing I saw was the eyes, and I think, for a moment, that they were a man's eyes. I almost call out to him, when I see the face. The body is shaped like a big cat, but it has the hairless skin of a human. Human eyes, wolf face, human skin, tiger body. It paces towards us carefully and confidently. We run, and somewhere along the way I drop Jones.

The Defense of Irkutsk

The last monster of summer had shoved its way through thin arctic ice, and begun its journey south. The hole in the ice had frozen-over before being spotted, and the tracks covered by wind-blown snow. The thing had wandered in its fugue of hunger and adrenaline for weeks before being spotted and called in by a militia outpost, already much too far south for comfort. The hunter-killer Hind squadrons were unavailable, protecting Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Valdivostok, or else receiving necessary maintenance, and so militia groups were hastily mobilized and assigned military officers.

Five tanks along a ridge. All had their hatches open with men standing in them. Most manning DShK heavy machine guns, but two have binoculars. Mist blankets the land.

The lieutenant had been gazing through his binoculars since dawn, as had the militia sergeant. The lieutenant was restless, occasionally taking his focus off of his binoculars to take in the landscape, or glancing at the sergeant. The sergeant was diligently scanning the fog, making a point of paying the lieutenant no mind.

"Silhouette, twelve o'clock" said the lieutenant .

"SILHOUETTE, TWELVE O'CLOCK" screamed the sergeant. The lieutenant winced in spite of himself, and the five tanks pointed their guns north. The lieutenant and the sergeant both focused on the shape in the mist.

The mist cleared briefly and revealed a tree.

The sergeants face remained carefully neutral. The lieutenant and the sergeant returned to scanning the landscape.

"Movement, eleven o'clock."

"MOVEMENT, ELEVEN O'CLOCK!"

The guns of the five tanks shifted left.

The fog shifted in the morning breeze. Nothing moved. The sergeant began to smirk. Then there came an echoing call, halfway between a scream and a trumpet, and the monster came charging at them.

"FIRE!" screamed both the lieutenant and the sergeant, and the call of the creature was met by the crack of the guns. The shells hit around the creature, some traveling too far, some coming up short. Shrapnel tore into its legs and belly and it began to bleed, but it continued its charge.

"FIRE!" the officers screamed again. This time the guns were loaded with APFSDS rounds, tungsten darts designed to pierce armor. They zipped through the creature as though nothing were there. It stumbled, and struggled to get up.

The lieutenant waved the line of tanks forward, and signaled the machineguns to open fire. The combined sound of five heavy machine guns is felt as much as heard. Fifty heavy bullets per second began tearing apart flesh, sending up eruptions of black blood.

Up close, it looked almost like a mammoth. Almost. It had too many trunks, and they were too long. It had too many tusks, and they were too sharp.And, as something tore its way out of the monsters belly and charged at the nearest tank, the lieutenant realized it had been pregnant.

Oxpeckers

Oxpeckers feed on blood, suckling at wounds and staining their yellow beaks red. They pull out soft, half-dead flesh for their chicks to swallow, then tear at healthy muscle for themselves. They can smell blood on the wind from miles away, and will converge on even the smallest cut. Where they range, no open injury is allowed to heal but is pecked and torn and pulled apart until the animal dies from infection, weeks later.

Blackflies

From spring until the first frost, the wetlands of Canada swarm with blackflies. Some feed on nectar, others feed on blood. Most lay their eggs in water, some lay their eggs in flesh. Most of those that lay their eggs in flesh prefer dead flesh, but there is one species that prefers the flesh of the living.

The flies are small, so small that their ovipositors cannot pierce skin. They therefore lay there eggs in whatever soft tissue they can access: open wounds, open mouths, your sinuses, your lungs, your stomach. Throughout summer moose and deer wander the wilderness, snorting blood and larvae.

The Elk

Alexey was looking for silhouettes on the horizon when he heard a branch snap behind him and he was turning and bringing up his shotgun when the elk slammed into him.

It was so large up close. It snorted, sending burst of fog into the cold air. He could hear the power of its lungs. It opened its mouth, revealing row after row of the teeth and fangs of many animals.

The elk bit into his leg and tugged, pulling him along the ground. It kept tugging until a piece of flesh was torn free, and lifted its head to chew.

Then Alexey was trying to remember what was happening. Why did his leg feel so strange? Everything came rushing back and he realized he had passed out. Much more of his leg was missing now, and he could see bone in several places, but there was no pain. He realized he was still gripping the shotgun.

Alexey struggled to lift the shotgun with one hand. He fired as soon as the barrel was pointed in the right direction. The recoil slammed the gun out of his hand and deafened him. The elk seemed unaffected, until blood began to flow from its thick matted fur. Then it resumed eating him, and he passed out again.

Whalefall

The galaxy has been, for billions of years and at all scales of power, perception, intelligence and activity, overrun with life. The geometry of reality gives spontaneous rise to minds and organisms, and they beget infinite variations of their kinds. Escaped experiments learn to breed, autonomous systems outgrow and abandon their creators, patterns self-select and iterate into extinction, ‘gods’ billions of years old delineate a living space in lesser minds, time and mutation turn every individual into an ecosystem, and always, new and ancient races build and fight and die. No matter how small. every niche is a fight to the death and nothing exists for long without gaining predators, prey, parasites, and infections. The cosmos is a rock, and when you overturn it, it writhes with life.

Whalefall is a sudden glut of resources stimulating an orgy of growth. Life operates as close to the edge of starvation as it can get away with, and when presented with surplus, gorges itself in a binge of eating and mating. It can only thrive, making the most of its find by packing itself with competition and variety, until you can't think beyond the smell of blood and rot and sex, until the glut is wrung dry and the ecosystem bursts, and the survivors return to a diet of starvation.

You said at first that things were better than ever, that grain quotas were being met faster than they could be set, that your fruits were larger and larger, and that everyone was having twins. Then you said it wouldn't stop, that crops were devoured by the soil, fruit rotted before they ripened, and that with every birth was discovered a new birth defect. Viruses, locusts, wolves, humans, everything thrives and swarms and mutates and speciates and you cannot survive with so much life.

You ask, why us? Why Earth? Why now?

There is nothing special about you, or this place. It is like this every time.

Humanity is a fruit, and it is almost ripe.

Notes: I have been vaguely dissatisfied with Strange Aeon for a while, and feel it needs to be refocused. I am making it less explicitly Lovecraft based, and intend to explore a sort of cosmic body horror.

Moscow

The banks of the Moskva river have collapsed and flooded, creating new wetlands. Much of the subway system is also flooded, but some are known to have survived in sealed sections. In summer, Moscow swarms with the activity a new ecosystem, and dozens of species of stinging insects. In winter the river freezes, and the survivors emerge to scavenge and hunt hibernating beasts.

The USSR will not abandon its former capital without a fight. There have been numerous attempts at reclamation over the years, all of which have failed, and many of which have left behind pockets of soldiers. Most die, some are assimilated by bands of survivors, passing on their skills.

Manhattan

South of central park, all of Manhattan is enclosed in glass, a carefully maintained habitable environment, spring 365 days a year. A glass roof is supported by the tops of smaller buildings and fills the gaps between taller ones. Cars are forbidden with the enclosure, as air pollution has nowhere to go, and much of the subway system is flooded. There is an electric bus service, bicycling is encouraged, and many streets have been converted to pedestrian only walkways and "open-air" markets.

Outside of the enclosure, things are dicier. The giant squatter cities of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Survivors focused on getting through the day, and preparing for increasingly difficult winters. Although they hate it, much of their economy is based on the Manhattan Enclosure, either in service positions or making hand-crafted goods to sell there on weekends.

London

An airtanker arrives, every day, to dump white powder over the city. The drops focus on Hyde Park, ground zero for the infection. 25 tons of powder per day adds up, blowing about the city and piling into drifts. When it rains the mixture foams and bubbles, and bleaches the stone as it drains towards the Thames. The river is as dead as the city, but with the population of Great Britain dead or evacuated, no one complains. Nature has grown strong enough and weird enough to look after itself anyway.

Magic

Science is the best way to understand a world ruled by unintelligent, perfectly predictable forces. What is the best way to understand a world that is alive and filled with life, in which everything has its own will, and in which reality is a constraint imposed by beings of infinite power? In such a world you must be both a shepherd and a parasite, taking nourishment from the weak, stealing power from the strong, and devising new tricks to use against competitors.

Controlling the weak, attracting the patronage of the strong, and competing always with rivals? These are the behaviors of witches and wizards.

CIA

The CIA is a mystery cult. Not explicitly, of course, but its organization of successive inner circles possessing increasingly more important secrets mimics the form perfectly. There are even "initiation rites", designed to test candidates for their ability to keep secrets, commonly including gaslighting, imprisonment, interrogations, and even false executions.

The uninitiated maintain mundane intelligence analysis duties. This is the public face of the agency, doing the sorts of work an intelligence agency is expected to do. Their primary concern is suppressing dissidents at home while supporting them abroad, especially in the USSR.

Members of the agency-within-the-agency are self-selected. Especially talented analysts, who, noticing the ways in which official narratives are insufficient, go hunting for their own explanations, and, crucially, find them. These people must be either initiated or killed. This inner circle is concerned with the secret war against the deep ones, know of the Elder Things held by the USSR, and have suspicions about the existence of the Mi-go. They have transcripts of Soviet/Elder Thing interviews, shoggoth samples, and numerous uncategorized anomalies.

The agency goes one level deeper. Inside the inner circle are the true masters, a group of transplants, seeking a Yithian archive, from which they can learn the true and secret history of the world.

Flourishing

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Ethics for Tomorrow"

Prior to commencement, growth rates were well below replacement. We estimate deployment of 1,000,000 units would be necessary to bring birth rates back up to 2.5. Re-investment of suitable units from each batch can negate need for acquiring "wild" units, but will take 10 years at minimum. Enough variety is present that a genetic bottleneck is not expected to become a problem.

The savings on support costs from the removal of extraneous material, combined with the value of trace elements recovered from said material has reduced upkeep and maintenance costs by 17%. Transplantation of extraneous material also offsets costs. Life support equipment remains our most significant cost.

The most successful hormone treatment sped development by an average of 4 weeks, but increased failure rates by 32%, representing an overall reduction in per-year production and is therefore not recommended. Improvements in nutrition and preventative treatments have reduced overall failure rates to 14%.

At this point, our primary problem is the assimilation of batches into the population. Adoption rates are not sufficient to handle more than 1% of each batch. State-run communal care and education is cost-prohibitive. A massive influx of youth will cause demographic instability and the exposure of our project will become inevitable.

Father Dagon, Mother Hydra

The deep ones are not worshipful, they acknowledge no gods. There are, however, those who they must respect. Mother Hydra, the great conglomeration, feeding tendrils groping upwards from Laurentian Abyss, grabbing some things and releasing others. Father Dagon, the giant, floating along the North Pacific Gyre, eating and growing and demanding more. Sister Echidna, which wanders the arctic, spitting monsters ashore. Brother Koshei, recently recovered from below Lake Baikal and held with caution and foolhardiness by the USSR. These are the subjects of deep one one art, the ones worthy of idolization.

Of course, words like "Father" and "Mother" are the result of a clumsy translation, as neither Dagon, Hydra, nor the deep ones have any sort of sex or gender. They are not family, but they are the closest thing.

The deep ones may have been human once. Ancient corpses, lost at sea, may have drifted into the clutches of an amorphous blob, a massively parallel genetic computer, and ancient meddler in natural history: a shoggoth. Once it had a sample of human DNA a shoggoth could have spent millenia "digesting" it, endlessly mixing and remixing it with all the sealife samples it had gathered before. If a viable combination were found, it would not be hard for the shoggoth to bud off an example of that creature, and release it into the sea.

But although the shoggoths made them, they are uncaring, and the deep ones have spent their whole lives immersed in the dream of Cthulhu.

COLD DIAMOND

PROPOSAL SUMMARY:

The planet is changing at too great a rate. Our choice is between extinctions. Extinction by plague and privation, or extinction by rapid adaptation: the transformation of humanity into an alien being suited for life on our alien planet. Previous experiments have already established the efficacy of progenitor methods of hypnosis in deep-brain modification. With progenitor assistance, the USSR can finally create a New Man.

PROPOSAL STATUS: ACCEPTED

PHASE 1 COMPLETE
REPORT SUMMARY:

Successful subjects display virtually unlimited pain-tolerance, perfect self-control, and an increase in empathy paired with a decrease in sympathy. Subjects typically experience a degree of dissociation from their pre-treatment lives, which can be advantageous in cementing new identities. 

~65% of subjects suffered a mental breakdown during the process, rendering them unfit as subjects and unable to carry out any other duty. The causes of these breakdowns remain unknown. No pattern has been established.

Loyalty is a problem. Successful subjects cooperate and obey only when incentivized to. In the next stage of the project we will be attempting to induce deference to authority.

Its Alive!

The guide brings the sacrament in a shot glass. It takes effect almost as soon as I down it. The scales fell from my eyes and I saw the hundreds of writhing things that were hiding underneath.

The stars a thousand cold uncaring eyes and the sky a single black eye in which the stars were mere flecks. Many-tongued trees lap at the sun and shove each other into the shade. In the darkness of the woods some small, scurrying thing is devoured by a larger, scurrying thing. In the darkness between the stars something larger is devoured by something larger still. On and throughout everything a thick veneer of bacteria, always and forever the exemplars of life.

"Behold" intoned the guide "Shub-Niggurath."

Dogs

Blind dogs lack both hair and eyes, but their senses of hearing and smell have both increased dramatically, allowing them to survive as skilled nocturnal hunters and scavengers. Not only do they breed true, but feral dogs will often give birth to blind dogs, ensuring their ubiquity. They can be found worldwide.

Hellhounds seem somehow to have gained traits from goats. Most noticeably, hooves and horns, as well as great dexterity on steep terrain and powerful jumps. Their primary prey are wild sheep and mountain goats. They are found in southern Europe and the middle east.

Carrion hounds have shriveled, hairless heads with with manes growing from their necks. Much like the vultures they resemble, they live by scavenging, although they will attack wounded or sick animals. They are found in the Americas, most often in mountainous regions.

Song dogs are similar to coyotes: small, cunning, and furtive. Their complex howling (from which they get their name) keeps them in constant contact with each other even over great distances, but they only meet to mate or hunt. They are found in northern Europe and Russia.

Once Human

Humanity, too, has been changed. The changes are widespread, and the causes have been difficult to determine and impossible to reverse. These changes have caused more dread and anxiety among humanity than all the other monsters combined.

Zombies (aka shadows, echoes, hollows, or blanks) are those whose conscious minds seem somehow to have “burnt out.” Zombies will maintain basic instincts, behaviors, and powerful habits, but nothing complex. They are often seen wandering in groups, moving away from danger, towards food and warmth. They do react with some intelligence towards their environment, for example, taking shelter from rain. In green zones, zombies usually survive about four months, or until winter, whichever comes first. What turns people into zombies remains a total mystery, but the phenomenon is global and constant.

Ghouls are habitual cannibals that have fallen prey to a mysterious disease, warping their features, and rendering them obligate carnivores. Their jaws lengthen, forming a short muzzle, their backs hunch, and their eyes become highly sensitive too light, forcing a nocturnal lifestyle. The disease is passed from mother to child, with affected children having all the associated changes at birth. Such children are perfectly healthy, but must suckle on blood to survive until they can handle solid food. The most popular hypothesis is that the changes are caused by prions, much like kuru, but gathering enough samples to test it has proven difficult and dangerous.

Transplants are intelligent, well-educated, and rarely with a previous history of mental illness. Every so often, these sorts of people become possessed with a powerful new drive, pushing them to abandon any previous responsibilities and delve deeply into historical, archeological, or paleontological mysteries. This lasts from five to ten years, at the end of which their old personality returns, with no memory of what had happened or why. Its cause is unknown: it is associated with a distinct pattern of neurological changes, but they seem caused by the illness instead of vice-versa.

Pharming Monsters

While many of the new creatures produced by the Mi-go mutagen are aggressive, and most are hazardous in at least some way, some are also useful. In particular, many produce useful biological compounds, including medicines. Humanity is not in any position to turn these down, however strange the source.

The parasite resembles a short centipede, with long stringy mandibles. It will latch itself to an appendage and then insert its mandibles, seeking major veins or arteries. While one mandible feeds on it's hosts blood supply, the other secretes a mixture of steroids. As a result host animals are stronger, more aggressive, and more fertile, but have shortened lifespans. The parasites have become sought after as sources of the steroids they secrete, as well as experimented with as a means of augmenting soldiers.

Ghost cows have moist, translucent, ghostly white skin. The moisture, which their skin continuously secrets, is actually an antiseptic and antibiotic. The skin is relatively weak, tearing easily, but the trade off is virtual immunity to infection, as well as resistance to many parasites and diseases. A collaboration of enterprising individuals across the world are attempting to capture, tame, and raise these cows as a source of antibiotics.

Numb worms are large, snakelike leeches. They hunt by sneaking up on a target if it is still, or, if desperate, leaping at it if it is moving. Once they bite into an animal, they inject it with an anticoagulant and an anesthetic while sucking out as much blood as possible. With the bitten area rapidly numbed, the animal with struggle less, lessening the risk of it injuring the worm. Unlike leeches, numb worms do not attach themselves for as long as possible, instead voluntarily detaching once full. The potential for numb worms to be farmed as a source of anesthetic is being explored.

USA

There are many parallels between the USA and the USSR. The United States were forced to abandon the west coast as the Rocky Mountains turned into one of the world's largest red zones. The federal government will not give up on reunification, but their control is spotty west of the Mississippi, and nonexistent west of the Rockies, with California now all but independent.

Much of the Midwest is also approaching red zone status. A new dust bowl, firestorms, and a seven year cycle of locust swarms all compete to destroy vital farmland. Well-to-do settlements in these regions are built underground, protecting them from these many disasters. Most of these are typical bunker complexes, but the most distinctive are the silo towns, built in decommissioned nuclear silos.

Most major cities contain white zones in the form of domes or arcologies, the most well known of which are the Manhattan Enclosure, the National Mall, the Chicago Towers, and the Orland Stilts. Aside from the Rockies, the largest red zones are the Louisiana bayou, the Florida everglades, and many sections of the Appalachian mountains.

America refuses to be defensive. No established politician will publicly give up on reunification. The less able they are to guarantee internal security, the more aggressively they advocate it.

USSR

The lands west of the Urals and east of the Vistula are now some of the least habitable on Earth, approximately 60% yellow zones and 20% red. Western Russia is an autonomous zone, a patchwork of communes, city-states, and simple chaos. Moscow itself is a red zone, where human life only continues underground. East of the Urals, however, the USSR persists.

Vladivostok is the new capital of the new USSR. Government officials, along with vital civilians, live in a large bunker complex beneath the city. The only remnants of communism are aesthetic: emblems on uniforms and statues. The USSR is spartan, a military state, devoted to and dominated by a military hierarchy.

The cyclical plagues, allergen storms, and toxic rains that render so much of the Earth uninhabitable have largely spared Siberia and central Asia. Mutant animals, however, are more common, especially the giants: gigantic, unique monsters which range across the land. Although the USSR retains a greater ability to wage conventional war than most nations, much of its military is therefore focused on monster hunting and defense.

The USSR has a major technological advantage in the form of live, friendly elder things, retrieved from Antarctica and revived. Deep below the rest of the Vladivostok bunkers, the progenitors tutor their accidental children in the arts of hypnosis, applied neurology, and artificial intelligence. All USSR soldiers are hypnotically fortified, and more and more of their vehicles are assisted or automated by brain-chips, making for a psychologically sturdy military.